This invention relates to a tray for holding a stack of media sheets for feeding into a printing mechanism. For convenience, the term xe2x80x9cpaperxe2x80x9d throughout this specification is to be understood as encompassing all forms of print media including but not limited to paper, plastic transparency sheets, vellum, and the like which are storable in a tray for feeding into a printing mechanism.
Certain types of paper trays associated with printing mechanisms normally have at least a pair of paper guides for accommodating different paper widths and lengths. Each paper guide is slidably mounted on the tray for movements relative to a respective wall of the tray to vary the spacing between the paper guide and its respective wall. Conventionally, each paper guide has to be adjusted individually. This may not be convenient in that normally papers of different sizes have different widths and lengths. Thus, for a user of a printing mechanism using the conventional paper tray, the user has to adjust both paper guides when different sized papers are loaded. This may not be desirable, especially if one of the paper guides is not easily accessible due to the design of the paper tray. Furthermore, when the user fails to adjust one of the paper guides correctly, paper skew is likely to occur during the subsequent picking process, and consequently printing quality may be affected.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved paper tray, which allows easier adjustments of its paper guides.
According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a tray for holding a stack of media sheets for feeding into a printing mechanism. The tray has a first media guide movable relative to a first wall of the tray in a first direction to vary a first spacing therebetween for accommodating different media sizes in the first direction. The tray also has a second media guide manually adjustable relative to a second wall of the tray in a second direction to vary a second spacing therebetween for accommodating different media sizes in the second direction. The second direction is substantially perpendicular to the first direction. Furthermore, the movements of the first guide are synchronized with movements of the second guide so that adjustment of the first guide is automatically achieved through the manual adjustment of the second guide.